Yearly Archives: 2013

Elvis Presley didn’t like his own movies, except maybe Flaming Star and King Creole. He idolized “angry young man” actors like Marlon Brando and James Dean and always hoped that with the right coaching, he might be able to count himself among their ranks. And maybe he could have. King Creole certainly shows impressive flashes. It’s entirely likely that if the proper director or producer had taken the young singer under wing and pushed him along in the right direction, Elvis could have picked up where James Dean left off, or at least gotten close. We’ll never know, unfortunately, because while Elvis dreamed of being the next Dean or Brando, his manager (the eternally villainous Colonel Parker) and studio executives saw him as little more than a bubblegum sweetheart and refused to cast him in anything but family-friendly Frankie Avalon roles.

My latest Frolic Afield over at The Cultural Gutter, and my last there for 2013. What better way to close out my first (half) year with The Cultural Gutter than with one of the worst things around. From Bea Arthur torch songs to wookie porn, Death to Life Day spoils the holidays by reminding you of the Star Wars Holiday Special.

Reparata and the Delrons were a girl group that spent a long career plumbing the lower echelons of the American pop charts – a fact that even a cursory listen to any survey of their many singles renders somewhat unbelievable. Like fellow East-coasters the Shangri-las, their early repertoire was heavy on teenage melodrama and heartbreak. But as the 60s wore on, and the girl group sound fell out of fashion, they branched out, and as a result ended up covering an intriguing spectrum of contemporary pop sounds, in the process recording a healthy number of shoulda-been hits and unrecognized classics.

Kentuckians grow up with Stephen Foster. He wrote “My Old Kentucky Home,” our state song, and The Stephen Foster Story has been playing at My Old Kentucky Home State Park for over fifty years. Although “America’s first composer” was born in Pennsylvania and later lived in Ohio (albeit in Cincinnati, which is just across the river from Kentucky), he is by right of his music an honorary Kentucky boy and a part of the fabric of the state. I’d been taught his songs since I was old enough to learn — “My Old Kentucky Home,” of course, but also “Hard Times Come Again No More,” “Oh! Susanna,” “Camptown Races,” and “Beautiful Dreamer.” They’re what we learned in elementary school music class when we weren’t mangling “Greensleeves” in accompaniment to a classmate awkwardly tooting it out on a recorder. I had no idea until recently that he lived — and died — just a stone’s throw from where I work now in New York City, on a block that is packed with New York history both glamorous and sordid.

Burt Bacharach’s soundtrack is probably the least maligned aspect of producer Charles Feldman’s 1967 film version of Casino Royale. For connoisseurs of cinematic disaster, the problems that beset that production are well familiar. Kaufman, who held the movie rights to Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, intended to make a canonical James Bond film, but upon failing to secure the cooperation of Eon Productions, decided instead to mount a spoof on a grand scale. The film’s star, Peter Sellers, was fired halfway through production, requiring that the remainder of the already loosely structured film be written and shot around his absence. On top of that, multiple directors were engaged, each delivering a “chapter” of the film marked by their own individual sensibility. The result has been railed against as a shamefully self-indulgent work of anti-cinema, a triumph of – not style over substance – but style as substance.

The character of Kara Murat first appeared in 1971, in a comic strip featured in the Turkish daily Gunaydin. Created by artist Abdullah Turhan and writer Rahmi Turan, he went on to stand beside figures like Tarkan as one of the most popular Turkish comic book heroes of the era. The transition of such characters from comic to screen was a natural one in the Turkish cinema of the day, and it was not long before producer Turker Inanoglu, a friend of Turan’s, purchased the rights to Kara Murat with the intention of doing just that.

Note: Despite what the byline says, this article is actually by Ryan Morini.

If you’re not familiar with the entire oeuvre of Cuneyt Arkin, it’s probably because he’s been in more movies than I ever thought existed. Seriously, if you want to see what’s probably a relatively complete filmography, check out tr.wikipedia.org. In the ’70s, he averaged more movies per year than a Pro-Bowl running back averages yards per carry. The man was a movie-making machine. So I decided to gather up as many of his zany costume drama action films as I can find this winter. Lion Man (Kiliç Aslan) is perhaps the most famous of these films in the ‘States, but in Turkey he’s famous for the longer series like Battal Gazi, Malkocoglu, and Kara Murat, each of which seem to have at least five or six films.

Owing to his tendency to wear bland trousers, a bland blazer, and a bland, too-billowy white shirt with no tie, I have often referred to Timothy Dalton’s two turns as James Bond as “the Casual Friday Bond.” Because Roger Moore explored the questionable sartorial indulgences of the 1970s, he is often cited as one of the worst-dressed Bonds, but at least his safari suits and flairs had a certain memorable boldness to them which, if not the equal of Connery’s timeless style, at least stood out from the crowd without looking like a clown (relative to the style around him). Dalton’s Bond — as well as Brosnan’s — commits the sin of being terribly, terribly boring in his dress. I would not have wanted James Bond to indulge the extremes of 80s fashion — no one needs James Bond to don a pastel t-shirt and parachute pants — but I do want him to look like something other than a mid-level bank manager on casual Friday.

As is my way, I have returned to The Cultural Gutter for my monthly Frolic Afield science fiction article. In honor of the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, The Dandy Doctor celebrates the sartorial choices of the Doctor’s many incarnations, concentrating on the dandiest and coincidentally my favorite version: Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor. Fluff your ruffled shirt, don your velvet smoking jacket, and join me in the TARDIS’ walk-in closet.

A seasonal Frolic Afield on Alcohol Professor celebrating both Krampusnacht and Repeal Day! Toasting Santa’s Devil showcases two beers, one American and one Italian, and one very special Krampus cocktail that will help you toast the repeal of Prohibition and the arrival of Santa’s most devilish sidekick.